All I'm saying is there's nothing wrong with learning from the mistakes of other people.

Well, you can't do that without empathy. You can't really empathize unless you have a connection with someone. You can't really have a connection with someone without being around them a lot.

Surrounding yourself with people who make mistakes, is just as risky as doing a drug on your own, and probably a lot worse, because where you might think you are too buzzed to drive, your friend might not, with you in the car.

Without empathy, those mistakes are attributable to idiocy. "If I was in that situation, that wouldn't have happened".

Sure reading darwin awards is great. Watching history channel, stuff about war, dangerous settings or friends, is decent exposure. Doing a drug is not that bad. Half the country's youth is on speed anyway.

Now, persistent drug use is bad. I will be the first to say that. I do not like people who do drugs. But I do like people who have the guts to experiment with them. There are far too many friends of mine who are losing their future because all they do is smoke weed and drift. But, that also comes from personal experience too.

"Well, you can't do that without empathy."

Horse dookie.

I'm the son of a farmer, I've worked around heavy machinery all my life. We would use diesel engines connected to our irrigation pipes in order to pump the water, which naturally involved the use of enormous steel axles - and when they got going, these things would spin at hundreds and hundreds of RPMs. I think we usually ran them at 1100, but I can't remember exactly.

When I was younger I was in the habit of wearing T-shirts out into the field - sensible enough, since work was always hot, but I was very skinny (almost emaciated to be honest) and my clothes tended to hang off me. To this end my father would not let me near the axles of these machines unless the power was shut off.

"Why not, Dad?" I asked him.

"Because that axle will catch the ends of your clothes and kill you - horribly - right in front of me."

Now, I don't know if that was true, specifically - he was applying the rule of "don't wear baggy clothes around heavy machinery" in a situation where it may not have been entirely appropriate - but I took that to heart and never went near the damn thing unless I had tucked in my shirt and tightened my belt so I knew it wouldn't come loose.

I had no reason to believe him, particularly: he'd never seen it happen to another person, leastways not on one of these axles. I'd certainly never seen it. Empathy never entered into the equation.

I just didn't want to die!

That, to me, seems like it would come before empathy.

That was empathy. Empathy is just the ability to feel what someone is feeling.
His fear was transferred upon you.

I've always had very strong empathy. When my dad told me stuff like that, instead of thinking "I don't want to die", I would always picture it happening to me, but I would be looking at it through his eyes rather than mine.

However, you knew that the machine was dangerous. Instinctively, you knew. You just didn't know that a loose t-shirt would increase the danger. People don't realize that drugs are dangerous. There is something inherently different between the two situations. Being hit by a hundred ton machine at high speeds is going to be a lot like getting punched except a lot harder. Doing a drug is...like what? Nobody I've known has ever said, "Hey, getting pucnhed in the face is so cool! It's like this indesribable feeling of tingling and sharpness"

"His fear was transferred upon you."

I would argue that this was just me, and my inherent sense of self-preservation. Most people have that! I certainly wasn't thinking of how it would hurt him, save in some small part: it was more that I didn't like the idea of having my limbs broken or being choked to death with my own shirt (since the collar of a shirt is always the last thing to tear, don't you know). I understand what you are saying, but that isn't my experience.

"People don't realize that drugs are dangerous. There is something inherently different between the two situations."

This I will accept: I'm pretty sure everyone's classmates in high school went through a phase where they all did that chest compression thing to bring on a head rush.

How does anyone realize that anything - drugs, loose clothing near fast, powerful moving objects, disobeying traffic laws, and the like - can be dangerous? It usually comes through 2 ways: observation, or to infer. I don't think its fear, its infering that the plausible outcome of participating in a set of behaviour may have a negative outcome, given enough time is utilized. For example, if he wore loose clothing once near an axle, he may not have had any major issues. However, there have been accidents around such objects grabbing and destroying limbs due to loose clothing. There is no difference between that and drugs. We can infer danger, but until some people (unfortunately) observe danger, they will not react.

That unfortunately is human stupidity. I don't buy 'People don't realize drugs are dangerous'. Maybe it's American culture, but we usually do see a lot of messages waxing about the dangers of drug usage. Maybe it has desensitized people, but the advisory warnings are still there. If people want to shrug those warnings, its their fault.

If you told a child 'Don't play with matches, or a lighter' - would you be attempting to transfer fear, or trying to infer that there is a strong correlation between misuse of fire-generating devices and household fires? It's possible that the former may be the case, but the latter is the truth.

There is a very significant difference from taking calculated risks that enhance the quality of life, and taking moronic risks that are highly likely to degrade the quality of your life. When it comes to playing with "mood altering" drugs, the risks associated with them vary quite widely; something like alcohol or pot is similar in risk to petting a unfamiliar dog in a quiet community, whereas hard drugs like crack-cocaine or crystal-meth are more inline with petting a wild and hungry wolf. I wouldn’t say that drugs like LSD or mushrooms on their own are high risk, but (from what I have seen in my own life) experimentation with these drugs tends to be an early indicator of further experimentation with riskier drugs.

Stickball, I think humans have certain inbred fears that meant to protect us from harmful things.

We are afraid of loud noises, heights, and deep water, just as an easy example. My fear of violent death may be described as more pronounced than some.

But that's the problem with drugs. It's not a guaranteed disaster.
If something happens to someone, a lot of the time the response by others is "he couldn't handle it"
Whereas the response to a deadly car crash or industrial accident isn't "he couldn't handle it". Maybe, "he wasn't paying attention" but there is this fundamental attribution that capability, and to a certain extent "coolness" is the scapegoat with drugs.

Even further, in Khuutra's case the response would have been "he didn't know that could happen", and that's we he was told.
To a certain extent, people also "don't know" about the dangers of drug use, but more accurately, they "don't understand".

But, according to what your dad said, he was trying to transfer his own emotion because he was stating why he would be upset. He didn't say that your life would be over. That was what you discerned from statement.

It would be akin to someone here saying, "Wessle, don't do acid because I would be really hurt if something happened to you".

As evidence, because your situation reminds me of kohlberg's stages of moral development.
http://www.character-education.info/Articles/stages_of_moral_development.htm

At young ages, the primary response to a pressure is "what's in it for me" and "does it help me stay out of trouble"

adults mainly think about how they affect society and try to do well by them.
Although Kohlbergs stages focus on morality, it does reflect a mindset. One that children apply things to themselves and adults apply things to others.

We live in a country founded by drunks on a planet basically founded by hallucinating drunks. It seemed to work out okay. And I'd rather have Wessle do acid than drink Mountain Dew.